


to think of time

by Soqquadro



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name. Fusion, Fluff and Angst, M/M, major character death warning is for the in-verse situation, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20352526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soqquadro/pseuds/Soqquadro
Summary: It feels like falling.Falling in a life that isn't his own, he sees colours and shapes exploding in all the corners of is mind, filling him to the brink with love for someone he doesn't know.(For him.)[...]He sees dancing and sunlight, and broken smiles smiled in a mirror – and he feels so full of life he could burst, and he has no idea how all this can be only half of him.(He thinks that if he was ever to see him whole, Suga could blind him for good.)





	to think of time

**1**

To think of time—of all that retrospection!

To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?

Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?

Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?

If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive!

That

everything was alive!

To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!

To think that we are now here, and bear our part!

[…]

**To think of time – Walt Whitman**

_**1.**_ [_beginnings; adagio_]

He remembers his mother as a blurred figure stroking his hair, a voice in the dark of his bedroom.

(_One day we'll be together again, Kou. Musubi doesn't let the threads of people who love each other too far from one another._)

She spoke softly, for a long time, about things he can't recall – something about duty, something about dreams and choices and fate. He doesn't think about it for many years after she dies and his father leaves.

Not that he goes very far – just a couple of streets away, and yet he feels so unreachable, so incredibly distant.

Itomori is a quiet, quiet little town, and it's so incredibly easy to lose yourself and every tale of bound together destinies in the days that go on and on, unchanging and uneventful like only in a village so small they can be. Suga doesn't like it as much as he probably should, but it's home.

It's home when he wakes up bathed in sunshine flooding in from the windows of his room, it's home when he leans down to kiss grandma's cheek before cooking breakfast, it's home when he greets Shimizu and Asahi and they go to school all together – it's home even when he doesn't want it to be, when he feels like he's being chocked by pressure and evil comments whispered just loudly enough for him to hear, when the colourful threads of his cord don't come together as they should.

Itomori is his home in a way any other place could never be, but he's young and bored and he and Shimizu spend more than one endless afternoon daydreaming about what they'll do once they graduate high school, because daydream is all you _can_ do when you're stuck on a bench with only disgusting canned coffee as a drink option. They talk about the shining, busy streets of Tokyo, even if they've been to the city maybe four times each in all their lives, and about cafés and university and the first flat they're going to get. It happens quite often, seeing as they have not much else to tend to, and sometimes Asahi joins them and he adds small details to their fantasies.

Suga will never understand how people are scared of him, because Asahi is the gentlest person he knows, too shy to even shoo stray cats away when they come rubbing themselves against his calves begging for food, his hands too tender for the job he does.

His life is like this – simple and quiet, and full of dreams. Literal ones and metaphorical ones, both vividly colourful, as they always have been.

He doesn't think much of it, the September morning he wakes up with a strange feeling in his chest and an unusual headache.

He doesn't think about his mother, and surely he doesn't think about her words, not even when he gets in the kitchen, kisses nana's temple and she just eyes him up and down like she hasn't seen him in ages, holding onto his wrist to look into his eyes like she's searching for something.

It lasts for only a moment and then she lets him go, clearly satisfied with what she finds, and pats his shoulder in comfort when his eyes widen, perplexed.

«Welcome back, Koushi.» she says. She beams at him with such joy he doesn't even question the statement. He just frowns slightly, turning towards the stove to prepare the teapot.

Once the tea's done, he fills two cups and puts one in front of grandma, smiling softly.

«I didn't know I had left, nana.» he jokes, sitting down next to her and sipping his tea. He's running late for school, but not so late to risk burning his tongue because he gulped down his too hot drink in a hurry.

She laughs a little behind her hand, eyes unreadable, and she doesn't answer.

He doesn't even know what is it he asked, after all.

The day only gets weirder from then on.

Shimizu and Asahi both stare at him like he's some kind of rabid animal the entire way to school, Asahi mumbling something that might be a question about his mental state at the current moment, blushing so much Suga asks _him_ if he's got a fever, and Shimizu frowning at his confused face, lips held in a tight line of disapproval.

«I'm not gonna hug you today, Suga-kun, unless you assure me you're not gonna try to kiss me again.» she says, and he must look so completely lost she takes pity on him and she hugs him all the same, and «Today at least you have your charm on.» she whispers in his ear before letting him go to walk by his side.

He still is quite worried about not remembering any of it, above all because Shimizu is possibly gayer than he is, and he knows it since they're eleven, and because he can't remember a time when he didn't wear the little red cord tied tight around his wrist.

When he enters the classroom, he's welcomed by a round of malevolent giggles that sound somehow different from the usual ones – the ones originated from his and his father's situation, the open hostility he shows every time Suga is connected to him in any way, or from the ritual for the kuchikamizake –, seeing as even the professor joins in, hiding a chuckle behind her hand.

«I sure hope today you remember where your sit is, Sugawara.» she cackles. He blushes at the sudden attention, and he just nods, almost throwing himself on said chair. Then the lesson starts, and nobody bothers him again.

The professor talks about the twilight and the creatures that can trespass on the thin veil stretched between colliding universes, if only they pay a fair price. He can feel the words tugging at some hidden part of him, resonating with something he already knows, but the more he wills himself to remember the more it slips away from him.

He absent-mindedly turns a page in his notebook, pen in hand to write down the notes, and there it is, unexpected and incomprehensible.

_Who are you?_

The writing is not his own, but there are so many things he doesn't understand about today he figures it can't be a bad idea to answer. He tried to kiss _Shimizu_, having some mysterious person who writes uninvited in his notebook's blank pages is not the worst news he's got today.

(_Sugawara Koushi._)

_**2.**_ [_interlude; andante moderato_]

Daichi wakes up to the tune of an unfamiliar alarm clock ringing in his ears and to too much sunlight pouring in from the windows.

He opens his eyes, and he's not in his room. This one is much messier than his own, some clothes thrown upon a chair and a pile of books near the futon, but it's clean. Quite lively, in fact.

He gets up quickly, confused, and when he looks at the full body mirror on the other side of the room, and the eyes that look back at him are someone else's, as are the fair mop of hair on his head and the mole near his – this person's – eye. The most logical solution is only one, even if it is a very strange setting for a dream. And it only keeps getting stranger the longer it drags on.

He gets scolded by the old lady that calls him _Koushi _because he got up too late to cook breakfast, and he gets slapped in the face by the girl he – mistakenly, clearly – supposed was his girlfriend, not to mention that a complete stranger hosting a political meeting in the town square reproaches him for his too long hair even if, to be honest, it doesn't look particularly indecent to him.

(It's like silver, catching every speck of light it gets hit with.)

He blushes himself silly when he doesn't respond at the roll call of the professor, and he stammers out an apology when he sits at the wrong desk _twice_. It feels so real he starts to question whether he's actually dreaming anymore.

Daichi goes through a notebook's pages until he finds a blank one, and he writes bold and big to make sure he'll see it.

_(Who are you?)_

The rest of the school day goes by without any other major accidents – if forgetting his bento can be considered a non major accident –, and he even manages to not mess the afternoon up by apologizing to the girl from this morning, but when the old lady sits him down in front of what he supposes is some kind of loom with spools of variously coloured thread hanging below it all and tells him to start braiding, all of his efforts are useless. He gets the threads so tangled together it takes him an hour to _un_tangle them, and whatever it is that he manages to make surely doesn't look like a braided cord.

The old lady sends him to sleep with a concerned look – she says something about stress and a ritual for which he needs to rest, and Daichi gladly takes the excuse for a swift retreat.

He curls up under the blankets, eyes closed tightly shut, and he wills himself to wake up.

He _does _ wake up, and he cannot remember why he's suddenly so grateful his bedroom is _his bedroom_. He checks his face in the bathroom's mirror, and everything is perfectly normal, he checks the hour and realises he's going to be late for school if he doesn't leave now. He hurries out of the room, grabbing the black jersey of Karasuno from its hanging spot behind the door, and everything is perfectly normal.

Everything keeps being perfectly normal until his mother asks him jokingly if today he remembers he has practice with the team, and until he finds out that apparently yesterday he showed up at school only at noon, claiming he got lost on his way there. Also, coach Ukai apparently wants his head because he didn't show up to practice at all.

He makes it back home mostly unharmed if not for a little soreness in his knees from all the laps coach made him run around the gym, but then he checks his diary.

(_My name's Sugawara Koushi._

_Who are you?_)

_ **3.** _ [ _in the middle; accelerando_]

They both realise quickly it's not going to stop. In fact, it happens more and more often, and without pattern – any day they might wake up living another life, and they never know when that'll be.

Talking is not the easiest thing to do being as it is, but they make do, somehow, because they need rules more than they need to ignore it or find a reason to it.

Suga wakes up to notes scribbled on the inside of his arms, on the arch of his foot, all over his hands.

They're mostly notes like _ Volleyball practice is on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evening from five to seven, do _ not _ miss it _ and _ Tomorrow there's a Chemistry test, _ that make him really hope the switches don't happen until the test is out of the way and possibly on a Wednesday, because Suga stopped playing volleyball in middle school and, anyway, he was never a wing spiker. But it's not so bad, after all – he gets to see Tokyo, and go to cafés even if Daichi doesn't approve of that particular activity as it leaves him broke, and he takes the chance to meddle a little bit with his life because Daichi is in dire need of a girlfriend and even _ he _ managed to realise as much.

He starts flirting with the cute manager of the volleyball club, Michimiya-san, mainly because she has a painful crush on Daichi and because, judging by his diary entries about her, he does too.

So then the notes turn into _ S _ _top bothering Michimiya-san, _ too _._ Because his charm apparently works a little too well, one memorable time it's also _Suga, why is a boy in love with _ me _?_ that makes him laugh for weeks to come.

It doesn't really matter if sometimes he reads a little too fondly the writing covering his skin, brushing it with light fingers where the felt tip is a little smudged, or if he catches himself thinking about him at night, before falling asleep, wondering if the next day he'll be here or there, if he'll be able to talk to Daichi at all.

It doesn't matter.

Daichi has floods of emojis waiting for him every morning. Suga – as he asked Daichi to call him (or, actually, threatened him of spending _all _of his money in sweets and not just the majority of it, if he dared use his full surname) – uses so many of them sometimes it's hard to find words in between the flowers and randomly placed fireworks, but he's a surprisingly good narrator. His notes are more like detailed resumes of the days he spends as Daichi, complete with suggestions about what to say to Michimiya-san to not _ruin all of his hard work _and with hints to his life – Daichi knows that in a while there'll be a festival in his town, the day the comet will pass over Japan. The last time that happened was years ago, but he figures maybe they just live in a lucky century. He remembers how beautiful it was, looking at the sky and seeing those bright, beautiful lights. He promises himself he's going to look for information.

Daichi doesn't know when he started chuckling a little while imagining Suga's antics, even as himself, or when exactly he became eager about reading his entries instead of dreading it.

It's different from everything he ever felt until now – more absurd and all the more real because of it. He's never been too good with the absurd, but Suga makes him think it wouldn't be so bad to try it, after all.

_ **4.** _ [ _in the middle; rubato_]

Itomori has a long story of tradition behind what it is today. Tradition and braided cords, that in the end are a bit the same thing.

Suga grew up dancing and working the loom with nana, listening to her stories about the gods and the fire that took away the reasons behind their rituals. He used to believe them with a passionate, unyielding faith, honestly convinced that if he and nana stopped dancing and preparing the kuchikamizake Itomori would have perished, but that was a long time ago.

While he dances, now, he can only hear the malicious giggles of classmates who are _so incredibly mature_ they cannot conceive the fact that he's a _boy _and he's _dancing_, and with an headdress, as if it wasn't enough. Truly shocking.

He shrugs it off at the best of his abilities, finishing the dance and letting the cords and bells on the ground. He moves slowly, unwrapping the rice, careful not to let the ample sleeves in the way – he chews it slowly, too, not opening his eyes even if he hears the whispered comments. It tastes a little sweet on his tongue, comforting and familiar, as is the gesture of wrapping it in the white packet and then in the cruet for the offering.

When he's done, he gets up and bows at the audience, smiling softly at Shimizu and Asahi, watching him from the back, and he carries the cruet inside the house without looking back once, his shoulders straight.

Sometimes he thinks he hates this town with all the hate he can manage to find in himself – other times, he knows that even if he'll leave one day he won't be able to not come back again.

He has a feeling he won't be there to carry the sake to the altar, tomorrow. He hopes Daichi won't be too weirded out by the fact he'll be carrying his saliva around.

Daichi wakes up in Suga's sunlight-bathed bedroom, to the furious knocking of his nana on the door. It's so early he's worried something happened, but then he finds the note Suga left on the pillow beside him, caring.

_Early start, need to go to the family altar to offer the kuchikamizake to the gods_, and another of the many things Daichi doesn't know is when he stopped questioning the sense of Suga's life.

He is, in fact, just _a little _weirded out by having to carry his own saliva to the mountain.

The climbing is long – it takes them most of the day – but nana talks about Musubi and tales of forgotten gods who braid the fate of humanity on a loom just like theirs, and about the kuchikamizake, about how the gods love it because to make it you need faith.

_You need to give up half of yourself_, she says, and Daichi shivers because then that is what he's keeping in his hands.

They walk and walk and _walk_ and it's exhausting, but also completely worth every last drop of sweat for the sight that rewards him when they reach the crater. He holds his breath a little, amazed by the sight in front of him.

He helps nana, careful not to slip or let her slip while they go down. She looks at him with knowing eyes, but Daichi pretends he doesn't notice – it won't be him having a conversation about _it_ with Suga's family.

They stop in front of the river, and her words almost make him flinch, sudden.

«From here on, it's the afterlife.» she says, and then she smiles at him softly, giving him her arm to help her cross. He doesn't know if she's being serious or not, and it unsettles him just a bit.

She doesn't follow him inside the small cave – probably because it really is _small_, so much he feels like he can barely fit inside it alone.

He blinks sheepishly in the last rays of dying sunshine, when he gets out – it was darker than he had noticed, and now even the sunset is blinding. Nana looks at him from her sit on the grass, eyebrows tightly knit together.

«Are you dreaming now, Koushi?» she asks, almost joking.

The last thing he hears is not her voice.

He never answers.

Daichi wakes up gasping, cheeks stained with tears and a terrible, gaping hollow inside his chest. He doesn't remember going to sleep as Suga – not that he ever remembers it, but this time it feels like something is wrong. Worse than usual, anyway.

He wipes away the tears and checks his phone, almost frantic. The only things he manages to gather from Suga's emoji-filled resume is that he has a _date_. With Michimiya-san. At ten, when it's half past nine and he's not even dressed yet.

Daichi might have doubts about what he feels, but he's never been one to stood someone up.

He still curses Sugawara Koushi and his meddling habit while he stabs himself with the toothbrush and desperately tries not to put on his shirt backwards, but even inside his head it doesn't sound too convinced.

The date doesn't go too bad.

It doesn't go well either, and they both notice. Michimiya-san smiles at him soft and so, so sad before bidding him goodbye. She kisses his cheek, whispering comfort in a teary jumble of words.

«Whoever it is that you like, they're very lucky, you know. Don't let them get away.» and she's already walking home, leaving him alone and dumbfounded, staring at the sky.

His phone almost burns inside his pocket. When he gives in, his hands shake while he types the numbers.

(_The number you have dialled is not in service._)

It's the sobs that wake him up. It's early morning, he can tell, and it's raining, except there's no sound of rain falling on the roof – then he looks in the mirror, and he realizes it's raining only in his eyes.

He has no idea why he's crying, but he can't stop. Tears just keep coming, and with them a deep ache somewhere inside of him, longing so brutal it makes him want to cry out.

Nana must have heard him, because she doesn't even look surprised when he tells her he's going to Tokyo.

The train ride is quiet, but the city is not. People bump into him without apologizing, and he has no idea where to go.

(_The number you have dialled is not in service._)

He walks and walks, until he's lost in the unfamiliar streets and his feet hurt and it's time to go home. Suga tells himself he's not disappointed, and he hops on the train to the station.

And that's when he sees Daichi, standing right in front of him, two stops away from where he needs to get off. He's reading some flash cards, mouthing the words – probably studying for a test, even if he hasn't told Suga about it.

He reaches out to him before he knows it, with trembling fingers that hesitate just enough to make him realize he can't just _touch his face _like some kind of creep.

He catches himself before he does just that, settles on calling his name. That's safe, and Daichi will know who he is.

He can not _ not _feel it, that persistent feeling tugging at his soul, can he?

«Daichi?» he whispers. No reaction whatsoever, so he tries again. «Daichi?» and this time he does look at Suga, confusion written all over his face.

He doesn't recognize him – Suga can see it in the way he fidgets around, uncomfortable, lips pressed in a thin line.

«I'm sorry, do we- do we know each other?» he asks, but he doesn't really mean it. And now it's too late, anyway, the doors already opening on his stop, so he does the only thing he can think of.

It's a matter of seconds – Suga smiles at him, as bright as he can manage with his heart wrenched and twisted in his chest, as big as he can find in himself to do, and he unwraps the red cord from his wrist, tucking it in Daichi's hand.

Then the crowd pushes him out of the carriage, and he's gone just like that.

(The last thing he thinks about before the comet falls in a thundering of horrible noise is his face, the faint, minuscule and undeniably _there_ sparkle of recognition that flickered in Daichi's eyes in those last moments on the train.

Then there's no more anything – no more dancing, no more sunlight.

He's gone just like that.)

_**5.**_ [_in the middle; precipitando_]

The switches stop, after that day on the mountain. Daichi doesn't know why or how, but going back to the absolute certainty he's going to wake up in his own skin is strangely painful.

Suga's number still doesn't work – he tries and tries and tries, so many times he can't count them, always to no avail.

So one day he takes one simple decision.

He packs a bag, tells the coach he's sick and kisses his mother on the cheek, and he leaves. He takes the first train to the countryside he finds, and then a bus, and then another one. He doesn't have photos, doesn't have anything apart from his own willpower and the knowledge he needs to find a small town near a meteoric lake, one thousand people at most and famous for its braided cords. Not much to work with, really, but Daichi was always stubborn.

So he gives the description to all the people he meets, and he keeps taking buses that bring him farther and farther into the mountains, until he finds the one person who doesn't look at him like he's a madman.

The village where the bus left him this time is so small he's quite surprised to find a restaurant, but grateful all the same. He's the only one there, and he orders just a cup of coffee, but the lady who serves him beams at him and fixes him some biscuits, too. He didn't even realise he _was _hungry, but he wolfs them down before asking her about Suga's home.

He repeated the same words so many times only today – and he received so many times the same answer – that it's startling when she makes an understanding noise, eyebrows shooting up.

«Braided cords, you say? Near here there was a village called Itomori who used to be famous for those. My husband was born there.» she says, smiling. «We could take you there.» and he nods, but he keeps looking at her, because that's one weird smile, a sad one.

Daichi doesn't understand.

He has a hard time understanding even when he sees with his own eyes the lake where once was a town, the ruins of buildings he grew to know in his dreams. There's nothing anymore, there.

Itomori isn't there anymore.

The restaurant owners watch him carefully, and the man ends up squeezing his shoulder when he sees his face, trying to be comforting.

«How?» he asks, and he knows it's disrespectful, he knows, this man was born here, but he needs to know. He needs to.

The man doesn't recoil, he doesn't refuse. He just stares at the twin lakes, and then he talks, slowly, knowingly.

«It happened three years ago, the day that comet came so close to Japan. It split in two, they said – but they also said the possibility it would end up falling on a village was so remote there was no reason to worry, and they were wrong.» he finishes, pain in his voice and memories in his eyes, and Daichi can feel that pain and those memories like they're his own.

He thanks them again, and then they leave, but he can't. Not yet.

There's still one place he needs to look for.

The climbing is as long as he remembers it, and the view is also as breathtaking as he remembers it, except this time, when he turns around, there's only water under him.

The river is larger and bigger than he remembers – the cave just as small.

(He _does _remember. He's not going to forget.

He's not, he's not, he's not.

How could he forget Suga, of all people, so bright he was blinding? How could he?)

On the walls there are painting he didn't notice before, and the white cruet is encrusted with green moss, a little difficult to open.

But there's also half of him, in there – there's the only chance he has to save him.

It's stupid, really, but it's the only thing he can do. He's in the afterlife, drinking the life of a ghost, and it's the only thing he can do to save him.

So Daichi closes his eyes, and drinks.

_**6.**_ [_interlude; stringendo_]

It feels like falling.

Falling in a life that isn't his own, he sees colours and shapes exploding in all the corners of is mind, filling him to the brink with love for someone he doesn't know.

(For him.)

He sees a blurred figure singing softly in a dark bedroom.

He sees the back of a man against the rectangle of light of an open door – he hears screaming and shattering of ceramic dishes.

He sees Shimizu, younger than he knows her, blushing red while he tells him she can never be his girlfriend – he hears himself (_Suga_) laughing while he assures her it's no problem, really.

He sees the red string tied around his wrist getting longer and longer, twisting and turning looking for something. He cries when he sees where it ends.

He sees dancing and sunlight, and broken smiles smiled in a mirror – and he feels so full of life he could burst, and he has no idea how all this can be only half of him.

(He thinks that if he was ever to see him whole, Suga could blind him for good.)

_**7.**_ [_in the middle; lo stesso tempo_]

He opens his eyes in the sun, staring at himself in a full body mirror. His hair shines with the sun, and he has a little mole underneath his left eye.

(He doesn't cry, but he spends a long time just hugging himself, breathing deeply in. Grateful.)

Daichi knows it's the same day – he checks the date and his heartbeat speeds up, his breath itches.

He bursts out of the room, running into the kitchen just to find nana already sitting, nursing her tea. She looks at him smiling.

«You're not Koushi, are you?» she says, and then she just laughs. «Welcome back anyway. It happens, sometimes, to the people of this family. We dream about lives that are not our own. It's Musubi.» and she shrugs, like it's nothing she hasn't seen before. Apparently it's not indeed.

Daichi hugs her tight, even if she knows he's not Suga. She lets him, patting his head fondly.

«Come on, you. Do what you need to, and let Koushi come back after.» it's all she says to him.

He nods, and sprints in the street, searching for Shimizu's home.

Both her and Asahi look at him like he's crazy, but that makes quite sense. After all, he just _did _tell them they're going die tonight if they don't evacuate the town. He prays they believe him – he won't be able to do anything, alone.

(If he _was _Suga maybe they would – maybe it would be easier. But he's not, so he'll have to make do anyway).

In the end, they agree to help – Shimizu looks at him like she knows, and Asahi follows her because she's always been the best judge of character they know.

So they have a plan, or the bones of one.

A really dangerous, really creative plan involving explosives from the construction site where Asahi works, the possibility of a forest fire and of them getting arrested for it, and Shimizu's ability to convince the most people she can manage to evacuate.

And, of course, _his _ability to convince his father – the _mayor_ – that they really, really need to get everyone out of the city before the festival begins or, better even, to cancel the festival altogether.

The result is that Daichi has never, not once in his life, been as terrified as he is now, running to the city hall.

If this doesn't work – if him not being Suga is what ruins this –, Itomori's fate is on his shoulders.

And, of course, when he gets there and the mayor doesn't listen – and why should he, he sounds insane, so much that he even goes as far as dialling the number of a madhouse to throw him into – he just _has _to lose his temper and all but pin him to the wall.

It's something Suga would never do, that much is clear – the man looks at him with a wide open mouth, panting, and Daichi can see in his eyes he knows all too well he's not his son.

He leaves after that. There's no use in trying again.

They'll have to save the city on their own.

The explosive went off, Shimizu is transmitting the evacuation message and everything is going terribly, when he realises that if he's here, that means Koushi is on the mountain.

Honestly, Daichi has no idea if he'll make it back in town in time if he goes now – but he cannot take the chance, can he?

So he borrows Asahi's bike and he's off, without so much as an explanation.

Suga wakes up in the dark.

He feels slippery stone underneath his palms, and his back is damp with water. In the shadows, he can make out the shapes of the kuchikamizake cruet.

He frowns, looking at his hands – except they're not his hands. They're Daichi's.

He has no idea why Daichi is here, nor why he fell asleep in this place, but if he's here he has to see him. He has to.

He gets up so fast he trips on his feet, crawling out of the cave, running into the river in his haste. He climbs the side of the mountain, slipping on loose rocks, and then he stops dead in his tracks when he catches sight of Itomori.

Or, best, of the fact that Itomori isn't there anymore.

In its place, another lake, bigger than the first one. Their waters reflect the light of the dying sun, sparkling.

It's beautiful and horrifying, and Suga is on his knees under the weight of the implications it hides.

Then, he hears it – faint and faraway, like it's coming from another time. Maybe it is.

(_Suga!_)

He starts calling his name the moment he sees the mountain rise in front of him. Bike discarded, he runs all the way to the top, screaming to make himself heard over the wind.

He does it a couple of times, maybe more and then he hears his name screamed back at him, from the other side of the crater (_DAICHI DAICHI DAICHI_) and he runs, runs, runs.

To him.

_**8.**_ [_interlude; prestissimo_]

They don't have much time.

They never have enough.

They pass each other in the moment the sun shines red over the top of the trees, and suddenly there they are. One in front of the other as they've never been, as themselves.

They're both panting, eyes wide in surprise, and they're too hesitant to touch, because it's been a dream for so long that it can't be real now.

But they don't have the luxury of silence, and Suga knows.

«You made such a disastrous mess with the loom nana wouldn't let me go near it for two weeks, Daichi.» he says, a smile blooming big on his lips, mischief twinkling in his eyes.

Daichi blushes, and it's adorable, so Suga knows it was a good choice.

«It was only once.» he mutters, embarrassed.

Suga never knew he rubs the back of his neck when he feels awkward, and he never knew how beautiful he looks through his own eyes.

He smiles, but then his eyes fall on the twin lakes next to them and his face goes dark, hurried.

«You need to evacuate the town, Suga. They'll die – you'll die. We- we had a plan, but it's not working as well as we hoped. You need to convince your father to make the announcement.» he speaks fast, urgent. He doesn't realize he ended up with his hands on Sugawara's shoulders until he's so close to him he can feel his breath on his own lips.

He doesn't back away. He just stares, trying to convey what he needs to say.

(_I don't want to let go I don't want to forget I don't want it to end_ and yet he knows there's no choice.)

Suga's not breathing anymore, chest clouded with the impossibly fast beating of his own heart and with the dread for his home and his family and his life, and the sun is going down so fast, inescapably. He closes his eyes, and he nods, and he _hopes _with all he has, just the briefest moment for Daichi to let go.

He doesn't, so he lets go first. He looks at him again, patting frantically in his pockets to search for the felt tip he knows is there since the last time he used it.

«Let's write our names on each other's hands? To not forget them?» he asks, uncertainty in his voice. But there's no reason, Daichi's already grabbing the pen, writing on his skin with ease, like it's just another dream. He even takes off his cord to wrap it around Suga's wrist again.

(It isn't another dream – it won't be ever again.)

He doesn't look at it, when he's finished. He just takes the felt tip and he bows his head, just a moment longer, just a moment-

The sun goes down, and Daichi is not there anymore.

_**9\. **_[_in the middle; lo stesso tempo_]

Suga looks up at the sky, and the comet is there, apparently innocent and about to destroy his life.

So he runs.

He runs in the woods, tears blinding him. He has no idea why he's crying.

(There was someone, once – someone who was important to him. He doesn't remember their name, but they were important. They were a dream and then they weren't anymore, and Suga remembers enough to know he has to go to his father and beg him if it's necessary, beg him to let everyone out of the town before something horrible happens.)

He keeps looking up, less and less time to spare, the comet closer with every step he takes – he trips when he gets to the road, scraping his palms.

He looks at them, and he sees black kanji drawn on his hands in a writing that's not his own.

_I love you_, they say.

He laughs and he cries even harder. Then he runs some more.

He runs until he's out of breath, and when he barges into the reunion room of the city hall the look in his father's eyes is unlike any other he has ever seen there for him.

He breathes in deep, only once.

(_I love you)_

And then he starts to talk.

_**10.**_ [_endings; adagio_] – _**Five years later**_

Daichi thinks his life is quite normal, all in all. He's still looking for a job and he doesn't have a partner or not even a cat, but at twenty-two he's just... average.

His life is perfectly normal, except for the deep, aching hollow in his chest. It's been there for years, since when he can remember – it's like missing a piece, like having amnesia.

He doesn't know what he's missing, and he doesn't know why he's looking for it.

Most of the time, he can pretend the hole is not there.

He sees him one morning – one of his perfectly normal mornings, on his way to yet another interview –, on the train going in the opposite direction.

(Hair like quicksilver, a mole underneath his left eye, sunlight playing with his smile.)

He sees him, and he feels something tug at the hollow in his chest – a pain so deep inside him he can't help but have to check his pulse to assure himself his heart's not bursting out of him –, screaming so loud he just _goes_.

He sees the man doing the same, but he loses him in the crowd of the station.

He walks away, looking through the faces that surround him. He takes one street, then another, so fast-paced he's almost running.

He doesn't know where he's going, he just needs to find him, he needs to, he needs to _ask something _and then after another blind turn there he is, on top of a staircase, panting.

Daichi keeps walking.

He's not so sure anymore. He might be wrong.

His soul aches.

He's on top of the stairs and the man is at the bottom, walking away already (_slipping through his fingers again_) when he catches sight of the red around his wrist.

It's the red that does it. Red and a smile made of sunlight, and just like that Daichi is crying without knowing why.

«Haven't we met?» he asks, loud in the silence of the street, voice shaking. The man stops abruptly, he turns around.

He's crying too, and when he feels the tears wet his cheeks he looks surprised for a moment.

He clears his throat, mouth agape.

«I thought so, too.» and he smiles through his tears, beaming at him, a laugh caught between his laboured breaths.

They both take a step forward, talking over each other in their haste.

«Your name is-»

**Author's Note:**

> hello there!  
this is something I wrote a really long time ago, and I'm sharing it just now for a series of reasons, but mainly because I realised I like it more than I thought I would after such a long time from writing it.  
I hope someone enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)  
it is inspired by the movie, and it follows its main plotlines and some of the scenes, but I tried to keep it fresh! - maybe failed, but the intention was there.  
thank you in advance for any feedback! you can also find me on tumblr @writing-nonwriter :)


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